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Google Announces Gas-fired Broadwing Energy Project with CCS

LCG, October 23, 2025--Google announced today a first-of-its kind agreement to support a natural gas-fired power plant with carbon capture and storage (CCS). The 400-MW Broadwing Energy power project, located in Decatur, Illinois, will capture and permanently store its carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. By agreeing to buy most of the power it generates, Google is helping get this new, baseload power source built and connected to the regional grid that supports our data centers.

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EPA Issues Class VI Well Permits to ExxonMobil for Carbon Capture and Storage Project in Texas

LCG, October 21, 2025--The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today issued three final Underground Injection Control (UIC) Class VI permits to ExxonMobil for their Rose Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) Project located in Jefferson County, Texas. Under the Safe Drinking Water Act, these permits allow ExxonMobil to convert three existing test wells permitted by the state to carbon dioxide (CO2) storage injection wells for long-term storage.

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Industry News

Pollution-free, Fossil-fueled Power Plant Planned

LCG, Feb. 12, 2001Sometimes it does take a rocket scientist, or a handful of them. According to a report this morning by United Press International, a group of retired rocket scientists has developed a prototype power plant that burns natural gas and emits no nitrogen oxides, no sulphur dioxide, no particulate matter and none of the other things power plants are blamed for.

The exhaust contains water, in the form of steam, and pure carbon dioxide which can be sold for industrial uses or used to make soft drinks fizz. There might be so much carbon dioxide that some would have to be sequestered, but that sounds easier to deal with than spent nuclear fuel.

The rocket scientists have formed a company, Clean Energy Systems Inc. of Sacramento, Calif., and built a 75 kilowatt prototype which works so well that the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory wants to build a 10 megawatt version. It goes without saying that the old rocket scientists have connections at L-Cubed, as the Lawrence Livermore laboratory is called by cognoscenti.

Steve Doyle, chief executive of Clean Energy Systems and, at 65, the youngest of the seven retired employees of Aerojet Inc., told UPI "Our goal is to become the most efficient producer of electricity in the country and to do that with zero emission."

The U.S. Department of Energy was sufficiently impressed by the 75 kilowatt model that it has awarded Doyle's company $1.8 million to help build the 10 megawatter. The rocket scientists have added $800,000 of their own money to the project.

Livermore has already set up a Zero Emission Steam Technology project headed by Ray Smith. The laboratory will ask the DOE next month for fiscal year 2003 funds to build a facility to house the 10 megawatt demonstration plant.

"When it's up and running, we get the benefit of having 10 megawatts of electricity we can use at the lab," which typically needs 53 megawatts for its operations and 8,000-person staff, Smith told the wire service.

Harry Brandt, chairman of Clean Energy Systems and an emeritus professor at University of California at Davis, said the clean burning system is based on rocket technology the men developed at Aerojet nearly 40 years ago. Natural gas is burned in pure oxygen instead of air, which results in total combustion.

The cost of natural gas fuel and oxygen might seem on the surface to be greater than just the cost of fuel for a conventional power plant, but the increased efficiency in converting gas to heat and heat to electricity would more than make up for the difference. On top of that, there would be no cost for emissions controls or cleaning up contamination.

"I think this concept represents one of the most significant potentials that we've reviewed," Smith told UPI. "It's sort of a way to have your cake and eat it too. We can continue to use fossil fuels without fouling our nest." He said he thought "pretty significant penetration of the California energy market" was possible by 2020.

Doyle said his team is up to the 20-year challenge. All but one of the original seven scientists are still on the company's board, and the missing one died. He was Rudi Beichel, who helped Germany develop the V-2 rocket during World War II and was instrumental in designing the Jupiter rocket in the United States.

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